Satellite TV
A hacker was busted. Apparently, it is illegal to sell the devices that are out there to thwart the security on satellite TV signals. They encrypt the signals for a reason. I don't have a problem with a company defending it's property. I also do not subscribe to cable or satellite because it costs too much.

A Canadian man was sentenced to seven years in a US prison this week after admitting he led a sophisticated satellite TV piracy ring that produced and sold thousands of hacked smart cards in the US and Canada. ... In his plea agreement with prosecutors, Mullen stipulated to heading a network of over 100 distributors throughout North America that sold thousands of hacked cards granting free access to all of DirecTV's channels. ... Mullen's daughter, Nicole McKenzie, said she believed the government coerced her father into pleading guilty by threatening to prosecute his family. "My parents have been married for 31 years and my dad is my two children's only father figure," McKenzie wrote. "You hear about these things on TV, but this is real life. In my opinion he was completely set up." The Register

I do hope the judges in the case that comes up next year will remember that the people of this country actually run the place, not the corporations.

The United States Supreme Court announced that it would hear a case on whether P2P companies are responsible for the piracy of their users. The court will hear an appeal to a lower court ruling that concluded that Grokster and StreamCast were not responsible for the activities of their users. The ruling was a blow to music companies and movie studios, both determined to stem piracy online. The ruling in the previous trial had rested on ruling in a case brought against the movie industry twenty years ago. The movie industry wanted to ban VCR's because they would allow film piracy. They lost the case, with courts ruling that VCR's had substantial other users than piracy. Michael Elkin, a copyright litigator said that "What's at stake is basically the future of a close to $500 billion copyright industry, specifically the music recording, motion picture and video industries which have been completely hammered with the advent of the Internet." Representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation reject this; "The copyright law principles set out in the Sony Betamax case have served innovators, copyright industries, and the public well for 20 years," said Fred von Lohmann, IP lawyer at EFF. "We at EFF look forward to the Supreme Court reaffirming the applicability of Betamax in the 21st century." The Supreme court will hear the case in March of 2005. Tom Graham

Tom reminds us the corporations tried this back in the eighties with VCRs. I know of a couple open source software development projects that use BitTorrent  as their official deployment  method. There really are other uses for pry-bars, matches, and butcher knives. Lets face it, Criminals find the most use in tools that are the most useful. How many lives would be saved every year if we banned personal automobiles?
Personally, I wish someone would devote as many resources to combating child pornography as the corporations throw at copyright infringement.